Friend Files is a new feature I’ve added to Away With Words, this being just the thirteenth installment. I will be interviewing a friend of mine and showcasing why they are a friend to me and what I like about them, and also a mini-interview (five questions) that detail what they think of me. It’s a way to acknowledge my friends out there and what they’re up to and also introduce them to my larger group of friends, acquaintances, and anyone else who might be interested in reading.
Today, I will be talking about Tranifer Lovely. Before I get into what I think of her, here is my mini-interview with Tranifer (exchanged over Facebook) where she jotted down just a few thoughts:
TRANIFER LOVELY’S FRIEND FILES INTERVIEW
ME: Give me some details about your life.
TRANIFER LOVELY: Hola, y’all! My name’s Tranifer (don’t ask me weird questions about why that is my name. I don’t ask why your name is Josh, or Sarah, or Brandon). I’m a back woods sea siren, mermaid, unicorn hybrid. I make monsters, play dress up, and sling coffee for a living.
ME: How exactly did we meet?
TRANIFER LOVELY: Uh… The Internet? I honestly am clueless about how the hell you got on my Facebook friends list, but I’m okay with it. After a while of you popping up in my news feed, you started popping up at the local Coast City Comicon (veterans from year one!) We took some good pictures together, our facebook friends thought we were kick-ass (why wouldn’t they?) the rest is history.
ME: What is one good memory you have involving me?
TRANIFER LOVELY: Uhhhh…Abe Lincoln vs. Poison Ivy. It happened.
ME: Why exactly are we still friends?
TRANIFER LOVELY: We are both super heroes whose secured identities are baristas. As the kids on the interwebs say, those aren’t aprons, they’re backwards superhero capes.
ME: Anything you want me to plug?
TRANIFER LOVELY: My website: WonkyCritters.com
I did indeed meet Tranifer online. Though she doesn’t seem to recall the specifics, no worries because I do! (Shhhh, it’s okay Tranifer…hahaha) A mutual friend of ours back when I was married (yup, it was that long ago) was trying to put together a ghost-hunting group with me, and he said he knew a couple other people he wanted to ask. Once he asked everyone he wanted to join, he made a Facebook group and added us all to it. Well, to get to know everyone better, I ended up friend-requesting everyone in the group on Facebook, and Tranifer was one of those who accepted my request. The ghost-hunting group never got off the ground due to everyone’s conflicting schedules (though I started my own group later on called Ghost Gumshoes) but Tranifer stayed in touch anyway. I found Tranifer’s Facebook posts hilarious, and she was always doing something fun, creative, and interesting. From there, our internet friendship evolved over time.
Tranifer is not only beautiful (inside and outside), but she is super-talented in the arts. She draws a ton of cool things, makes awesome “Critters” (her name for all the stuffed animal creations she makes on her website in the link above) and she is very, very funny. She has a dry sense of humor, which is something I’m drawn to in people. She is also a great proponent of the arts, and she is doing a thing on her blog now where she interviews artists and promotes their work on her site. Propping up fellow artists is something I always strive to do, and it makes me happy to see others doing it so readily like she is.
Since we first started speaking on Facebook, I’ve had the pleasure of talking with Tranifer at a couple of comic conventions (mostly Coast City Comicon, as she said above) in person as well as having several online conversations with her where we discussed our pasts, our present jobs as Baristas at Starbucks, and various other things nerdy and otherwise. She also introduced me to her boyfriend, and although I haven’t talked with him much he seemed like a really nice and cool guy.
Some of our ideologies differ, but that’s okay because Tranifer is one of those rare people who doesn’t let viewpoints get in the way of friendship. I am always thankful for those people in my life, because real life consists of a myriad of different outlooks, not all of them uniform. I think we share a great respect for one another, though you’d have to ask her if that was the case or not. I know I respect her because she’s been through a lot in life already, as I have, and those of us who’ve walked through the fire can usually relate pretty well to each other’s experiences even if it made us into different people.
All in all, I am thankful I chanced into meeting Tranifer and got to know her through her Facebook musings. We not only became internet friends, but real-life friends as well. This is another scenario which illustrates that internet friendships can be fostered and don’t necessarily have to stop outside of their digital foundations.
And with that, I leave you with some photos relevant to my friendship with Tranifer:
Away With Words 